Pelican 1450 Review

In today’s blog we discuss carrying your equipment in the Pelican 1450.

Recently I was invited to a weekend in the U.P. to ride snowmobiles with friends through the beautiful back country of “Pure Michigan” (I always thought that was a great slogan). Of course, I jumped at the chance to be out in the back country with an opportunity to photograph some hard to access areas and to get away from the hustle and bustle of living just outside of Milwaukee.

After some planning and trying to come up with how to transport my camera gear one Nikon D-800, a 24-70 F2.8 and a 70-200 F2.8 Nikon lenses and two Lume Cubes, I concluded that placing them in my NatGeo camera backpack or my shoulder bag was not the best equipment to do the job and I risked serious damage if anything happened. After some research, it was decided that buying a hard case was the best option for this trip.

I invested in a Pelican 1450 medium case which was just large enough for the gear I was taking (if you live in the Greater Milwaukee area I recommend Mike Crivello’s Cameras). It cost me around 150-160 dollars but safely protecting your gear is worth the cost.

1450 it comes with pluck foam, which is great you can pull out what you need to fit your camera and lenses so they will fit nice and snug without any movement inside the case.

It’s also water proof which was perfect for what I was doing because being attached to the back of the snowmobile meant it was bombarded by snow and ice flying up from the track of the snowmobile and other passing ones. I can say that after 350 miles of riding over the weekend there was no moisture inside the case.

The case is also made of a think hard plastic which makes it a little bit on the heavier side but it is worth every bit of the extra protection it provides as I can attest to.
In addition to buying the case for the trip I figured I would build a rack for the case so the travel bags could still be attached beneath my seat. The rack worked great, it held the case and kept it right where it was supposed to be until about mile 75, then though vibration and metal fatigue (note Aluminum is not the best to bend without reinforcing) causing the case to fall off with the rack and bounce down the trail and into an encounter with a trailing snowmobile. After fearing the worst, we recovered the case unlocked it and to my surprise everything was still where I left it and in great working condition like nothing had ever happened. It then got strapped with a 5-dollar ratchet strap to the back of my sled and stayed there the rest of the 200 miles we rode the first day.

After some serious hard testing of the Pelican 1450, I can say the case/brand is something a photographer should consider investing in. The ability to securely hold your gear, to be locked shut and the fact that it is water proof are all great pluses. The only downside is the weight, it’s about 7 LBS with the foam and no camera gear. Once I added my camera gear it weighed around 12-14 LBS but the weight does come because of the thickness off the plastic which keeps your gear safe.
The case measures about 16.5″ x 13.00″ x 7” which it not all that large, it will fit under the seat of an airplane if you are traveling it also fits quite nicely under the seat of a truck or larger SUV so it can be hidden from sight of would be robbers. I cannot say if it will fit under a car seat seeing as I do not have access to a small car.
Pelican say it will float with about 30 LBS of gear in it but I am going to take Pelicans word on seeing as I don’t wish to put 30 LBS of weight in it to test it out.
The case also comes in an array of colors I went with the standard black, but it also comes in gray, yellow orange, green and tan.

If you’re planning a trip to the back country where it might bebouncy, dirty or wet and a backpack or satchel bag won’t cover it consider investing in a hard case. You make look like you’re carrying the nuclear launch codes (as my friends said on the trip while stopping in a pub) but at least your gear is as safe as those codes are.

Turn the screen off & treat it like film Challenge

A little Challenge: Turn the screen off & treat it like film

I went out in the city of Milwaukee last night to scout a few locations for an upcoming session and I noticed a few other photographers out and about doing their thing and having a good time.

The one thing I noticed though, is almost everyone out there was looking at the back of their cameras on the LCD screens to see if the photograph was the way they wanted it every time they clicked the shutter button. It got me thinking I started with film, moved too digital and now I do the same thing, it's kinda interesting how the times have changed. Also, it’s a little sad, because there was a time we could not see what our images looked like until we developed the film and then went into the dark room and created out prints or had that dreaded W store develop our prints for us. I do miss the darkroom some days.

So what if we found a way to turn that little screen off or temporally black tape over it so we cannot instantly see the result to know if we have to shoot it again or not? Think of it as getting it right in the camera without the instant gratification like we used to have back in the film days.

I’m not saying to do this right off the bat on a payed gig but on a test/fun session just to see how things turn out. I’m willing to bet the first time or two we might need to go back and possibly try again or modify it in Photoshop or your current editing software more than you needed to over just looking at it on the screen. I think in the long run it would give us a more intimate understanding of our cameras and accessory gear.

Give it a try for one or two fun sessions I encourage you and I will try this myself to only look through the viewfinder and not at the LCD screen on the back, wait till you get home to see if you got it right like in the days of film.

I would love to see what you come up with right out of the camera leave a photo in the comment section below.

Best,
Tim Gumz

Backups, to your Backup!

So it has been a little while from my last blog post. In that time, I have learned to always make sure to have backups and if possible backups to your backup.

This applies to everything, have backups to your camera gear, editing and transportation. For example, my main camera is a Nikon D-800 and its backup is a Nikon D-300 and that cameras backup is an old film camera from the mid 90’s. For my files I backup them on external hard drives and on a cloud network and I don’t remove them from the memory cards until they are loaded on both. That way in case something happens to my files I am not out of the work I have just done for a client or for myself. As for transportation I have an 09 Dodge and that’s backup is a old tired 68 Pontiac Firebird its there if its need to but thankfully I have never had that need.

The lesson here is even though you may not be using your backup device never let it out of your reach because everything is going fine until, it’s not.  I ran into “IT’S NOT”, not too long ago.

I came home from an corporate event in Milwaukee, WI in the middle of June one night to find the black screen of DOOOMMM on my computer with a deadline looming quick. In the end we found out the video card had fried itself and took part of the motherboard with it but had left the hard drive intact with no loss of photos or business files.
It was at that point in time I realized the backup laptop was nowhere to be found. I had lent out to a friend whose computer shorted out and was waiting on a new one and need to keep their business going. So I had just broken my own rule number 1, “never let your back up out of reach because everything is okay until it isn’t.” Thanks to a local photographer friend Jeff Boomer Ernst who lent me his backup, I was back up and running the next day an able to make my deadline.
A day after deadline my backup was back and I was up and running and a few more days after that a new laptop arrived and business is back to normal.

In the youth of my business I had just committed a major foepaw and that was, I didn’t have my backup. Now I realize that for other photographers who companies are in their infancy, you may not have backups to your backup or backups in general, it can be expensive. Though it is something as you take on more and more clients, you do have to look into because if you screw up and miss a deadline or lose the work its can cost you in the long run. That client talks to other possible clients and it spiderwebs out and can cause more problem down the line. Even if you don’t really use your backups you need to have them. I got lucky and had the help of a friend and I was able to make deadline.

So I cannot express enough to beginning photographers, first to have a backup camera and second have a backup computer. If you cannot currently afford to do so make sure you have a backup plan in case the unthinkable does happen to you and that way you and your clients are not left out in the cold.